THE Global Justice Movement Website

Friday, June 28, 2013

We’ve been watching the progress of the Chinese offer for
Smithfield Foods, Inc., with great interest.It does seem, after all, that it would be a perfect test case for a
leveraged worker buyout financed by a consortium of banks with the loans
rediscounted at the Richmond Federal Reserve.Ownership of the company would remain in American hands, and what
amounts to an economic stimulus of billions of new dollars backed with private
sector hard assets instead of government debt would show the way to finance
growth and pay down the debt at the same time.

Thursday, June 27, 2013

As Jonathan
Swift explained in the sixth number of his “Drapier’s Letters,” commenting on
what he believed to be the fraud of William Wood’s State-granted monopoly for
the coinage of copper halfpence and farthings for Ireland, “I foolishly disdained
to have Recourse to Whining, Lamenting, and Crying for Mercy,
but rather chose to appeal to Law and Liberty and the
common Rights of Mankind, without considering the Climate I was in.”

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

A few months ago, Mr. Chris Dorf, an occasional participant in
the “Kelso Binary Economics Discussion Group”
and on this blog who supports Keynesian theory, published some vague
accusations against Dr. Norman G. Kurland, president of CESJ.Mr. Dorf refused to support his accusations
with either evidence or logic.This
encouraged a number of other critics of CESJ to join with Mr. Dorf in making
further unsubstantiated accusations, particularly after he falsely accused CESJ
of “banning” him.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Yesterday
we described the current financial situation in the world in very broad terms,
along with what governments have been doing to try and fix things.In general, the solution is to print more
money backed solely by increases in government debt.In effect, this is trying to get out of a
hole by digging it deeper.

Monday, June 24, 2013

A
serious problem in the world today is that the people in charge of the world’s
central banks have no idea what a central bank is supposed to do. Their
guiding assumption is that central banks were invented to finance
government. They also believe (erroneously) that “money is peculiarly a
creation of the State” (Keynes, Treatise on Money).

Friday, June 21, 2013

As of this writing, the Dow is up slightly from the “plunge”
of the last few days.This writer’s
opinion is that this is a result of the short sellers locking in their profits
by buying back what they sold off over the last couple of days.It could also be that the speculators are
counting on some action by the Federal Reserve to pump more worthless cash into
the system to stimulate the bubble and raise prices artificially.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

During the Great War (a.k.a., World War I), both sides
insisted on running head-on against the other, despite the fact that military
technology had advanced far beyond tactics.Nevertheless, the leaders kept on using tactics that were at least half
a century out of date.Yards of
territory were gained or lost at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Contrary to popular belief among some Catholic groups that
there is something inherently wrong in the American system as designed by the
Founding Fathers, there is every indication that Leo XIII and other popes saw
something special about the United States — in a good way.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

As we noted in our last episode in this series, socialism
was growing by leaps and bounds in the latter half of the 19th
century, particularly in America, which had seemed immune.This was largely due to the fact that prior
to the Civil War the issue had been between the industrial and commercial
capitalism of the North that ran on wage slavery, and the agrarian capitalism
of the South that ran on chattel slavery.

Friday, June 14, 2013

As of this writing (a little after 2:00 pm EDST), the Dow is
down more than a hundred points.It’s
up, it’s down.Don’t even try to second
guess it.Just take your cash to Las
Vegas and play the slots or Keno.You
probably won’t come out any better, but you can catch the shows and get free
drinks.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

We’ve
already seen how in the American Civil War and World War I, the politicians
decided to finance the war effort using debt instead of taxes.In the 19th and early 20th
centuries following the wars, however, the government made a concerted effort
to pay down the war debt.This put the
economy and the money supply back on a more or less sound basis.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Maintenance
of a national debt by the U.S. government began in earnest after the Civil War.This was in the mistaken belief that the
currency had to be backed with government debt, and that if the government paid
down its debt, there would be no money.Reliance on government debt, however, ensured that the people who most
needed access to credit were denied that access.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Last
week we got a (nother) question about money creation.Given the fact that the more money the
government seems to be printing up the less we have, this is a question on
everyone’s lips — or, at least, in everyone’s pocketbook.As our correspondent said,

Friday, June 7, 2013

Despite the evident bafflement and lack of vision exhibited
by the powers-that-be on both sides of the aisle, we are making progress in
presenting and even implementing the Just Third Way.This appears to be making people nervous who
think — erroneously — that their jobs, reputations, careers, and so on, are
somehow threatened by the Just Third Way.

Thursday, June 6, 2013

On May 22, 2013, the Wall
Street Journal published an op-ed piece by Phil Gramm and Steve McMillin, “The
Debt Problem Hasn’t Vanished.”We
thought it was pretty good — except that the authors assumed as a given that
the currency had to be backed by government debt.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

As we saw in yesterday’s posting, the U.S. Supreme Court’s
opinion in the Slaughterhouse Cases effectively shifted the source of all
rights, especially life, liberty and property, from human beings, to the
State.This, to all intents and
purposes, abolished the natural law as the basis for the government of the
United States.

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

As we saw yesterday, in the notorious Dred Scott decision,
the United States Supreme Court ruled that, to all intents and purposes, rights
come from the State and are vested in the people at the discretion of the
State.Under traditional natural law
theory, of course, rights are inherent in each human being, and are vested in
the State at the discretion of the people.As Pius XI pointed out,

Monday, June 3, 2013

Last week we examined the first “turning point” in people’s
understanding of money.That was the
idea that seems to have popped up around the time of the Reformation that
rights are not inherent in human beings, but in the State.By a somewhat circuitous route, this new
concept of where rights come from found its way into political economy.This provided the foundation for the rapid
expansion of State power and totalitarianism in the 20th century.